Average Audio Processing Load suddenly permanently maxed out

Good morning!

I was wondering if someone might be able to help?

My Cubase (8.5.30) was working perfectly last night. I closed the project to do something else and when I re-opened, the Average Audio Processing Load meter is maxed out/clipping constantly, and any attempts to play just give me this awful distorted sound. I’ve turned it back on today and still the same.

I unplugged my Soundcard - Komplete Audio 6 and it falls back to about half (which still seems really high, given my PC specs). I plugged it back in and it goes back to maxing out.

I can listen to other audio sources on my PC just fine but Cubase is not a happy bunny.

I’ve run everything in license center and service center to update, have reinstalled my soundcard drivers, renamed the appdata folder to make it rebuild itself and am unsure of what to do as next.

My PC specs…
Processor Intel-6700k CPU at 4.00GHz
Installed RAM 32GB
Windows 10.

On a search, some people suggested that it might be the NVidia drivers, but I don’t have an Nvidia graphics card, just the built in on the processor.

Would anyone be able to help with any suggestions as to what might be going on?

Many thanks,

QS

Just on this project?? What about on a new empty project?